


In This Time, In This Place

by Fyre



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Female-Presenting Aziraphale (Good Omens), Male-Presenting Crowley (Good Omens), harlem renaissance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:54:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25668529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: Many years have passed since an encounter in a park. Since everything went dreadfully wrong.In a nightclub on the other side of the world, Aziraphale can't help remembering.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 29
Kudos: 113





	In This Time, In This Place

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Flaming Like Anything (Volume 1)

Rain-spattered winds from the north howl their way along 133rd street but inside the club, hidden behind the façade of a cigar shop, the people in the know – who knock the knock, walk the walk and say the right words – are warm and dry.

On the stage, the big band plays and the stage lights glitter, reflecting and dancing on faux gold panels and beaded dresses and dewdrops of sweat on pale and dark skin alike. People weave together in the middle of the floor, moving to the rhythm, hands aloft, expressions beatific.

There’s a passion and an excitement in the place, a sense of potential and possibility and freedom.

Some people call them the Lavender crowd, as if that should be considered an insult. Lavender is a beautiful flower and so much hardier than many give it credit for.

From a stool by the bar, Aziraphale watches. She watches the women sitting so close that they fit like two pieces of a puzzle. She watches the men lean together conspiratorially, exchanging kisses and cigarette smoke in one easy breath.

No fear in this place. No recriminations or doubts, only people seizing the chance to be themselves, and that’s like a warm fire kindling inside the angel. Love ought not to be forbidden, secreted away in the gleaming beautiful belly of a hidden club.

Her glass is cool against her fingertips, the liquor as furtive and lovely as the people within the walls. Rendering something forbidden never makes it so. Humans should know that. They’ve been touching the forbidden since Eden and yet they never learn the lesson.

“Excuse me, Miss.”

Aziraphale turns on her stool, the lacy fringe of her cream dress rustling against the legs. A woman, not much more than twenty, is standing close by, her cheeks flushing almost as red as her lips, her eyes dark and hopefully wide. “Yes, my dear?”

The girl’s tongue is pink and pale, darting along her lips. “Do you… do want some company?”

It’s flattering and Aziraphale can’t help but smile. “That’s very sweet of you,” she says as gently as she can. “But I’m waiting for a lady-friend.”

The girl’s blush deepens, but she smiles and nods. “She’s a lucky dame,” she says and bows out gracefully, disappearing back through the sea of bodies turned all shades of gold by the gleaming lights.

Aziraphale returns her gaze to the rest of the room. A blessing is due for a girl with a big voice and a big heart set to send ripples out into the world. She’s here, or she will be soon. With sweet liquor on her lips, Aziraphale is happy to wait, bathing in the pleasure and joy of people who have shed convention and masks and are simply _being_.

She remembers other places like this, the bittersweet ache forever there. Four decades ago, he danced. Oh, how he danced. The gentlemen, his friends, were unashamed of themselves within their secret walls. There were embraces and kisses in the candle-lit evenings, and for a little while, Aziraphale had imagined himself… if not happy, perhaps content. Accepted.

Loved?

No. No, that was… something apart. Something else. Something not for him.

That—

Once he had thought—

 _Fraternizing_.

The word has sat on his heart for decades now.

It’s only four small syllables, yet it did as much damage as if he had taken a rock and thrown it through a stained glass window, leaving nothing but shards to cut himself to ribbons on every time he tried to piece them together again. He tried many times in the first decade but when you can’t find the person you need to see and have no place to put the pieces, it’s impossible. Carrying the sharp fragments is too painful and when one decade turned to three, to five…

Anger and grief often go hand-in-hand, partners in a dance Aziraphale has tried so hard to walk away from. The Greater Good, he would tell himself, and yet, how he longed to see…

And, as if the very thought conjures him, Aziraphale sees a familiar profile among the dancing bodies on the floor.

Like the serpent he is, the demon winds his way across the hall, and even from a distance Aziraphale can feel the whisper of demonic suggestion. Eyes shift, ruby lips turn, and bodies move intimately closer. He could be one of them, stylish, beautiful, slender as a reed, arms and throat bare.

She should let him be. Let him continue his business and be done, but her tongue betrays her, though it feels as heavy as lead, and his name slips out as soft as a prayer.

Crowley whips around as if stung, and even through the polished lenses of his glasses, Aziraphale can tell he is staring. There’s something in the way his brows loft, something in the tension in his cheeks. When you have had millennia to memorise someone’s every expression, two discs of darkened glass can hide very little from you.

Aziraphale abandons her glass on the bar, but doesn’t rise. She doesn’t trust her legs to hold her, as Crowley stares then approaches with serpentine grace, skirt swirling like a tail behind him. His hair is longer now, framing his face in waves to his chin, a dark band circling his brow. Fashionable as ever, she thinks helplessly, mesmerised by the scale-shimmer of red beads on black. There’s nothing subtle about his dress, a sharp plunging V of a neckline, a silver chain – unadorned – swinging in the void and a jagged black choker at his throat dripping rubies, everything about it fearsome, dangerous and sensual.

All at once, they’re face-to-face.

No.

No, not quite.

Crowley is standing. Perhaps looming is a better term. Or perhaps not. Hiding. Framed by the lights, his face half-lost in shadow.

Aziraphale still sits and her hands are curling and tense in her lap. There are words to be said, so many of them. Recrimination, fury, misery, grief, loneliness, and yet all of them fade away like the final notes of a melody. The song is over. The tune is sung.

But in this place…

This is a place where one can take off one’s mask.

Where one needn’t be afraid.

Aziraphale breathes deeply. “Crowley,” she says. The first note in a new melody, perhaps.

Even in the shadows she can see the twitch of his mouth. “Angel.”

Lord, how she’s missed that. It’s foolish and silly and it’s… it’s only a word and a descriptor and her damned job title, but hearing it, that word, that intonation, those lips…

Her vision clouds, but she is smiling. “Oh _Crowley_.”

He tilts his head and lets a little light in, enough that she can see the brightness of his eyes behind his glasses. Light enough to know he is balancing as carefully as she is right now. “Fancy a drink?”

She nods without a second thought. A handful of notes, even awkwardly put together, can become something again. “Please.”

Crowley signals to the bartender and slides onto the seat next to her, lounging sidelong against the bar. It’s excessively casual, desperately trying to show nonchalance and calm, but his blood-red nails rattling on the bar give him away as much as Aziraphale’s own bone-white knuckles.

The silence is as thick in the air as the cigarette smoke and perfume and for a few unbearably long moments, they both look at one another and away. A beat, a rest. Isn’t that the terminology the musicians use?

Two glasses tap lightly on the bar and, as one they move and reach for them. Something to focus on.

Crowley tilts his head and his hair shines like burnished copper. “To… what?” he asks, holding his glass towards her.

Aziraphale doesn’t know. She’s very aware she doesn’t know anything at all. “Anything,” she says, lifting her own glass, her foot slipping on the crossbar of her stool, her knee knocking against his. “Everything.” The trumpet wails and the air is fragrant and hot and Crowley is there and they are– things are all right. They can be all right. “This place,” she says. “To this place.”

One side of his scarlet lips turn up. “Sounds good,” he agrees and their glasses ring together like a bell. “To this place.”

They drink and smile and smile and drink a little more. Aziraphale pretends not to notice her knee is still resting against Crowley’s bare one, a strangely intimate brush of contact, the only barrier a thin layer of nylon and silk. And Crowley, she suspects, is very deliberately pretending not to notice that every little shift of his body brushes his knee softly against hers.

It’s Crowley who finally breaks the silence. He has his chin resting on the back of his fingers, his elbow propped on the bar. Almost effortless, almost insouciant. “A dress,” he says.

Aziraphale glances down. It’s almost long enough to be considered a robe in another era. Creamy silk with a very low waistline and lovely patterns of feathers and wings in intricate lacework where many of the girls around them prefer beads and sequins. It’s delicate and soft and matched by the long white feather pinned in her hair. Her arms, though, are bare and – for the first time since she arrived – she feels peculiarly exposed.

“I thought I ought to blend in a little,” she murmurs. “The young singer I’m here to see… she has particular companions and I couldn’t be sure I could get near her otherwise.”

“Ah…” Crowley nods.

“And you,” Aziraphale observes. “Hardly the usual form for a dress like that.”

At that, he smiles. “In this place? It’s almost expected.” He shifts again, folding one leg over the other and very nearly snaring Aziraphale’s between them.

She glances down at their so-nearly tangled limbs, pale and bare as her arms. It feels altogether too intimate and she hides her flush in her glass, taking another indecorous sip. If he notices, he doesn’t say, only tapping the bar and calling for more drinks.

There are words, they both know, that ought to be said, but for now, for a while, Aziraphale only wants the peace. No words that can lead to tempers flaring and more stupid, aching loneliness. And so they take their fresh glasses and drink and smile and drink again.

“I hope I’m not interrupting your work,” she finally says, licking the alcohol-sweet smear from the corner of her lips. “You seemed very busy.”

Crowley makes a dismissive sound. “The usual. Bit of lust. Bit of envy.” He gives her that familiar sly half-smile that she half-expected never to see again. “Fancy a trade?”

It’s odd that such a simple thing can make her heart stutter. “The Arrangement? Still?”

That sly smile is edged with caution now that she looks closely, as if he’s testing the waters, making sure. “If you like,” he says, trying for glibness and utterly failing. “Bit more entertaining than sitting around all night, waiting for musicians. Notoriously unreliable, that lot.”

The relief is like a wave, and just like old times, Aziraphale rolls her eyes, hiding a smile. “Ah. I see. That’s the only reason you came to talk to me, is it? Wanting to knock off early?”

Crowley slinks a little closer. “I bet you’ve missed it,” he murmurs and it ripples down her spine. “A little bit of wickedness suits you, angel.”

Aziraphale turns away, hot-cheeked, clutching her glass between her hands. “Ah, well, I wouldn’t– it’s not–”

Crowley’s chuckle is warm against the curve where her neck meets her shoulder. More than only arms exposed there and the shiver is utterly irresistible as it runs through her. “Oh, go on,” he teases and how she’s missed that as well, the way he prods and pokes and makes her so flustered she can scarcely say the words, because he _knows_ her.

“I… I shouldn’t,” she says, as she has a hundred, a thousand times before. Persuade me, she never says aloud. Encourage me. Cajole me. _Tempt_ me. The game they play, the wordless careful dance to make sure they are on the same page, following the same key.

Crowley’s stool scrapes a little closer. “Just once more,” he says, “For old time’s sake.”

She turns her back, feigning worried thought, and in the mirror behind the bar, she watches the so-familiar sway of his body, the smile he rarely shows, the way his features soften when he thinks she doesn’t notice. He’s so close and that void he had left is gone as if it were never there.

She’ll say yes. She always does. Because… why wouldn’t she? It’s him. It’s _them_. This is what they do, what they have done for centuries and she–

“Is he bothering you?”

Aziraphale tears her eyes from Crowley’s profile in the mirror to stare at the woman beyond him and turns. The pretty young thing from before is standing by her stool, her dark eyes fixed on Crowley. Were she a cat, every hackle would be up and every claw unsheathed.

“Pardon?”

The girl’s voice is hard as nails. “This Sheikh, putting on a skirt and playing at Sheba.”

At once, Aziraphale understands. To anyone watching them, how it must’ve looked. “Oh, oh no, my dear,” she says gently, squeezing the girl’s arm. “He and I… we…” Her words trailed off at the thrum of Crowley’s power on the girl’s skin. Whatever he has stoked, it feels like fearful anger and not for herself. She’s afraid _for_ Aziraphale.

Words won’t suffice, not from her.

The sweet little creature needs to see and understand.

And so Aziraphale turns back to the demon. Crowley looks frightfully embarrassed, no doubt never expecting his own machinations to be aimed at him. “My dear, our young friend believes you have ill intentions to my person.”

“No!” Crowley bursts out, hot red patches appearing on his cheeks. “I just– that–” He throws up his hands. “Oh, for Satan’s sake!”

And before Aziraphale can understand what he’s about, Crowley strikes, snake-fast, and drops the softest of kisses on her lips. It’s pure and chaste and gentle and carries the whisper of a miracle that negates whatever influence Crowley has laid on the young human.

“Oh!” The girl blushes beet red. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”

She goes. Or does she?

Aziraphale doesn’t know and nor does she care when the miracle is thrumming soft and lovingly against her lips. She lifts one hand to touch them. No demon should ever have been able to make something so _good_. It feels like truth and light and…

She puts her glass on the bar. She tries. She misses. She doesn’t notice because she’s on her feet and now she is the one gazing down at Crowley and he is staring up at her, colour fading from his flushed cheeks, a penitent, wide-eyed and fearful.

“I shouldn’t’ve–”

Her lips smother his words.

There is something divine in it. Some whisper of something that she has never felt, never known, and she draws back, shaken.

Crowley’s lips part and close several times. His throat works and finally, finally he speaks. “ _Angel_ …”

Like a prayer, like a devotion, like _love_.

The clatter of glasses, the wail of the trumpet, the laughter and noise all fades to nothing. It doesn’t matter. Inconsequential. Crowley reaches out mutely, takes her hand and kisses the back. When he turns it over, Aziraphale feels a little of her soul take flight as warm dry lips press to the bare skin of her wrist.

She reaches out – her other hand – and touches his cheek.

In this time, in this place…

This is a place where one can take off one’s mask and simply be.

She leans closer and hears the soft urgent sound of longing in Crowley’s throat a heartbeat before their lips meet again. He’s trembling under her palm. His cheek is wet and she kisses him softly, again and again, until he parts his lips and she can taste the salt of his sob.

A place to take off masks, but some things are not for the eyes of others.

She draws back, stroking his cheek with her thumb. “Will you come with me?” she asks in little more than a shaking breath.

Crowley nods, turning his lips to her palm and kissing it.

When he rises, she takes his hand and together they weave through the crowd, unnoticed, unimportant. Aziraphale knows this place and she knows where the quiet spots are. The rooms and the hiding holes and – if one is waiting for a musician – the dressing rooms.

Humans drift around them like dandelion on the breeze and if a gesture from her hand encourages them away, no matter. They pass her singer and the blessing falls on the girl like down, almost an afterthought, until there is a room and a door between them and the world. It’s small, scarcely more than mirrors and tables, a single flickering lightbulb swaying above them. But they are alone and she locks the door so they will remain so.

“Angel…” Crowley says, his voice a trembling frail thing. “ _Aziraphale_ …”

She turns to face him and reaches up, lifting his glasses away from his eyes. The raw emotion there is so beautiful and staggering that for a moment she forgets how to breathe. And she forgets again when she sways into him and claims his mouth with her own.

For a moment, an agonisingly long moment, he doesn’t move.

Then his arms are around her waist and he makes another of those intoxicatingly urgent little sounds and his lips part to hers.

A kiss is such a simple thing, really. Two pairs of lips touching. Very simple. But no one warned her about tenderness of warm, pliable flesh, or the sensation of a gasp hitching against her tongue, or the warmth that spreads through every inch of her body. She cannot help but devour every little bit of it, burying her fingers in Crowley’s hair, dropping his glasses to clutch at the coarse beading of his dress.

Crowley is the one to rear back, flushed, his ribs heaving against her breasts. “You…” His voice is strangled and shaking and his eyes are polished amber under the flickering light. His throat works and she _knows_ he’s trying to say words they should say, words that need to be said, but now, she doesn’t want or need words. Not here. Not now.

“Darling,” she says. That’s all she can say and it’s all he needs to hear before he pulls her closer, burying his face in her shoulder, trembling like a leaf. She knows. Of course she knows. And he _must_ know too.

Somewhere far beyond the walls, music begins afresh and a woman’s voice rings out. A blessed voice, powerful and strong.

Crowley sways them to the beat and Aziraphale hums along to the melody. It’s not dancing, not with their numerous left feet, but it’s lovely and they’re close and together and that’s all that really matters.

Aziraphale closes her eyes as the soft warm press of Crowley’s lips repeats again and again, tracing the line of the music up her throat and back again. She sighs along with the trumpet, her fingers playing their way up the nape of his neck.

When Crowley lifts his head again, the kisses are softer, slower, like coming home.

Aziraphale draws back and gazes at him as they sway. In this place…

She gently steps out of the circle of his arms and raises her hands to slip the straps of her dress from her shoulders, then turns, offering her back. “Unbutton me.”

He draws a breath, but doesn’t refuse. His fingers skitter and tremble. Tremolo, she thinks with a pleasant shiver, as he undoes the row of little pearl buttons one by one. Inch by inch the dress slithers down. Her camisole is as thin as air. Her reflection catches her eye, the shape of her, unfamiliar and yet familiar and in the reflection she sees the red-nailed hands slide around her waist, spreading at her belly.

Crowley is gleaming gold and ruby at her shoulder, and those kisses are back – soft, urgent – along the new bare skin. But only there. His hands are still, not wandering, waiting for their cue, and Aziraphale has been waiting for too long already. She covers his hand with hers and pushes it lower, beneath the thin silk and against the flimsy drawers below.

“A-Angel,” Crowley breathes. “You sure?”

In answer, she draws his hand back up and all at once, there’s nothing between them. His fingers slip down and flutter in such a delicate way.

“Please,” she whispers.

His eyes close for a moment, and when they open again, he meets her gaze in the mirror. His hand moves slowly, teasing and awakening sensations she’s never really thought about before. At her throat, his lips part, baring his teeth. The bites are still gentle, but when he draws on the skin with his lips she shivers again, heat like molten liquid in her veins.

When he strokes a little harder, when the throb of heat beats in her ears like a drum, she catches his hand, holding it there, a wordless plea – that’s how their game is played. Words said and unsaid and a melody running through. And he knows how to play, oh he does. His other hand slips beneath the camisole and she moans as he cradles her breast in his palm, strokes with his thumb.

The light flickers. In the mirror, he is a flame and shadow at her shoulder. His half-hidden hands teasing sound and sensation from her until she is pressing back into him, soft, needy, urgent sounds matching every squeeze of his fingers and the press-rub of his thumb below and – and oh, the rock of him against her body. He wants, he _wants_ , and she…

“Oh!” She can only grasp at his wrist. “C-Crowley.”

“S’all right,” Crowley breathes hot and hungry at her throat. “I’ve got you.”

“I-I can’t–” The mirror is a haze. She– her eyes cannot– everything is thrumming in her and she pushes against his hand, increasing the tempo, every cry a crescendo upon the last and he presses and squeezes and kisses and bites and the world crashes in about her as she comes apart.

He holds her through it all, murmuring reassurances against her throat, praising her, worshipping her, touching her and bringing her back down to earth. It’s a gentle kind of fall as he draws his hand out of her knickers. His fingers gleam and he lifts his hand, tenderly stroking her cheek

“All right, angel?” he whispers, as if fearing the answer.

Her words are still scattered. Actions speak louder, she thinks, and laps the taste of her from his fingers. He moans in her ear as if he’s dying, and he’s still pressing against her, the too too solid flesh tangled in beads and silk. She captures his wrist and sucks one finger, then another, until he’s all but squirming against her.

“Angel,” Crowley warns. “If you don’t stop–”

She stares into the mirror, into his eyes, and takes his thumb in her mouth.

The sound he makes is utterly inhuman. He draws his hands free and pulls her round to face him, his mouth crushing to hers. Her so recently-recovered breath is stolen again. He presses in hard against her, pushing her back, step by step, until she nudges the edge of the table.

He breaks away from the kiss, staring at her with such heat she’s amazed she doesn’t ignite at once. With no question, no hesitation, he reaches under her camisole and pushes her knickers down. They fall in a puddle of silk at her ankles and Crowley is already pulling up the hem of his dress.

Aziraphale nods, mouth dry, body aching and thrumming and ready. She clears the surface behind her with a single swipe of her hand and lifts herself up just enough on the edge of the table. Crowley crowds in against her, as he if can’t bear to have even a breath of space between them. His skirt tangles up between their bellies and he pauses, freezes, holding as she feels the heat of him and he feels the heat of her and they stare at one another.

With a single, simple roll of his hips, he’s inside her. The cry catches in her throat, and the one that follows he steals from her lips. There’s nothing hesitant or playful in their touches now. It’s… too many years of longing, half a century and more of misery and grief and solitude, and desperate and hungry and urgent and Aziraphale wraps him up in arms and legs as if somehow it will make it impossible for them to be torn apart again.

Her shoulders press back to the mirror as he steals kiss after kiss, her fingers in his hair and tearing at his bare back in the immodest V of his dress. His hands are on her thighs, at her hips, grasping and bruising, and she squeezes him tighter, her soft warmth hiding the strength of a soldier. He groans into her mouth as his hips shudder and jerk and all at once they’re both breathing sharp and fast and Aziraphale throws her head back hard against the glass as he slips a hand between them and their syncopated cries are – for a single and perfect second – in harmony.

Crowley gasps out his release against her throat, his hands slipping to return to her trembling, clinging thighs. He kisses her shoulder, his breath damp and warm, and she wordlessly strokes her fingers through his hair. His headband is gone. She didn’t even notice when it fell.

The light flickers above them.

Beyond the door, the music still plays.

This room feels like a world apart, a world they can only have for now, for a moment. Outside that door, these walls, there’s too much at stake.

In this time, in this place...

Aziraphale presses her lips to Crowley’s shoulder.

No. Not yet. She won’t think about it yet.

Crowley knows.

He must know too.

He knows her well enough.

They know each other well enough.

Aziraphale closes her eyes and holds him tighter. She won’t cry. She won’t.

Crowley runs his lips lightly back and forth across her shoulder. He knows. He knows. He doesn’t move away. He doesn’t let go either. And when the tears come, silent and hot against his skin, he doesn’t say a word. He just puts his arms around her and he _knows_.

It’s the game they play, after all. All the unspoken words and the familiar tune.

No one noticed them leave the dance hall. Some time later, no one notices them return.

The music has quieted now, a single man teasing melancholy melodies out of the piano. The place is emptying. The dance floor is clear and without the glitter and sparkle of the dancers, it all looks forlorn and bare. It could be an abandoned temple, Aziraphale thinks sadly, watching as people slip out the main doors in ones and twos. Back to the real world of masks and decorum and propriety.

Crowley lays a hand gently, briefly, at the base of her back.

Words unspoken again.

 _Time to go_.

Outside, the rain has finally stopped and they stand side by side on the pavement. Or sidewalk. It is America, after all.

The music is fading away and Aziraphale looks down at her hands. Play me a new song, she wants to demand but they’re back in the real world now. Pools of light shine on the road and Crowley is already drawing away.

But this time there’s a happier coda, a whisper close to her ear, a breath of farewell and promise.

“See you around,” it trills, “sweetheart.”

And for a moment, in the butter-gold glow of a streetlamp, Aziraphale smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> The Harlem Renaissance was an epic time for black culture in New York through the 1920s and 1930s. There were famously queer performers and clubs secreted about in Harlem if you knew were to look with drag balls and singers. The performer Aziraphale is waiting for is none other than Gladys Bentley.


End file.
